Students filed in from the cold: noses dripping, coats being shed, bodies settling into seats. Culbreth theater was uncharacteristically full for the annual competition kickoff, usually sparsely attended by students still under the influence of winter break. This year however, attendance peaked. And it is certainly to do with the topic of this year’s Vortex design competition: the Preston Avenue transportation corridor.

Earlier that morning, Manuel Bailo and Genevieve Keller, this year’s Vortex coordinators led roughly 100 students eastward on Preston Avenue, the site of this year’s school-wide week-long design competition. Students then returned to Grounds to hear the kickoff lecture, a collection of speeches by major community players and competition coordinators about the subject in question.

Dean Beth Meyer opened the lecture encouraging students to give head to the nuances of local landscape: “Preston might look like a relatively inconsequential suburban place near the city, but we can see issues of power, we can see issues of class and race all connected to issues of topography.”

The particular humanity intertwined with this year’s Vortex topic deeply resonated in one speaker’s remarks: “There has to be the belief in the inherent potential of every individual regardless of demography,” said Sarad Davenport, director of City of Promise, an initiative promoting wellbeing through community programming and advocacy in local neighborhoods in Charlottesville.

Each speaker addressed a conflict of deep nostalgia for community implicated by the site. Davenport, along with speakers Mark Green, Julie Bargmann and Genevieve Keller all gave compelling and personal accounts of the metamorphosis of Preston Avenue. Stories of friends, family and colleagues were sited, painting a rich picture of the site’s past.

Concluding the kickoff was Hvroje Njiric, the competition’s guest critic from Croatia: “I’m not interested in putting in flower boxes or benches or planting a tree or two, I’m more interested in how [deeply] we can penetrate society.” The guest of honor urged students to look for the root of the urban issues in creating their designs for the week.

The tone and emotion aligned with each speaker’s message to competition participants set a definite call to action. It is no question that this Vortex stands out from its predecessors.